The cost of ancillary goods and services associated with poultry production has continuously escalated over the past two decades, while retail poultry prices have remained relatively stable. As a consequence, there has been and continues to be significant pressure on poultry producers to develop new technology and production methodologies aimed at reducing costs by way of increasing overall production efficiency.
Two areas of particular interest to commercial poultry producers, with regard to their flock, are feed conversion ratios and bird mortality rates. Feed conversion ratio relates the amount of feed consumed to the amount of dressed, final product, and bird mortality rates relate to the premature death and hence, complete loss of the intended final product. Poultry farmers strive to maximize feed conversion ratios, and minimize bird mortality rates, as optimizing either of these parameters would ultimately lead to lower overall production costs and hence greater profit margins.
One major factor, relevant to both feed conversion ratios and bird mortality rates, is the ambient pathogen concentration within the water supply that is directed to the poultry house and consumed by the birds. It has been well documented, through extensive research, that higher ambient pathogen levels generally lead to less than optimal feed conversion ratios, while leading to higher than optimal mortality rates. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that generally lowering ambient pathogen concentrations within the feed water supply would lead to improvements in both the feed conversion ratios and mortality rates, and hence would, lead to a generally more cost efficient operation.
While water treatment systems that utilize ozone as the active disinfecting agent have been used previously, these systems generally require that the volume of water being treated should be maintained at or near atmospheric pressure as the ozone is effectively bubbled therethrough. Typically, this requires that the water taken from a water main be dropped from street pressure to atmospheric pressure prior to treatment. Furthermore, following ozonation treatment, the volume of treated water must then be re-pressurized so that the treated water may be effectively pumped to the desired locations and dispersed. This is expensive, as the system must be provided with both a non-pressurized treating and holding tank and a final pressurized tank.
Therefore, there is a need for an ozone water treating system that is relatively simple in design and economical to operate and which generally minimizes the number of tanks and the amount of hardware required.